Rielle Hunter will not emasculate John Edwards. And she will not fix his mistakes. Because daughter Quinn must learn about the problems of the female-and-male relationship. So never never never no no no do not emasculate your little Johnnikins.

Rielle is trying to contrast her hot relationship with Johnny with wife Elizabeth's emasculating relationship with John. Rielle kept quiet about the paternity of her baby because she was waiting for Johnny to be rid of dying wife Elizabeth so she could become the next Mrs. Edwards. She kept silent until it became obvious that Johnny was not going to marry her and live happily ever after.

On the video, both participants are naked. Hunter is propped up against the hotel bed headboard, with John Edwards belly-down on the bed between her legs. As Hunter, the campaign's official videographer, holds the camera, a smiling Edwards performs oral sex. Because of the camera angle, Hunter's face is not visible, but her distinctive jewelry is. Not only does candidate Edwards know he's being filmed, one source says, he's also clowning around and "graphically performing for the camera."

interesting. there was indeed a lot of material in that article that feminists could have a go at. So in your view, in her head she has rearticulated patriarchy with new age rhetoric, but really she hasen't gotten the message of just how ridiculous silencing yourself when your man is clearly wrong really is; least of all as a lesson for your daughter on male-female relationships ? this is before my time, so i'm trying to understand your point ..

i just thought how ridiculous she is comes through loud and clear -- the article in GQ (men's mag), the photos (MILF status seeking), exploiting her daughter ... all of this makes her look like a dumb hussy.

Those GQ pictures are clearly suggestive of pedophilia, if she weren't nuts enough anyway.

She didn't talk before because it would have ended her income stream. This is all about her having a child with a rich man. It's a really simple story that repeats itself over and over and over. Can you say King David?

so she lived through her parents' infidelity, but she had no trouble doing this to edwards' kids and wife .... regardless of how broken their marriage was, which she uses as a way to absolve herself from what has happened between elizabeth and john.

her new age reality admits being a part of causing that sort of pain to his children and to his dying wife.

i suspect that 'karma' is a moral underpinning of new age thinking. if it is, she should be really really frightened. but i bet she's found someway to believe that she was right, and that she's OK by karma's standards....

It is contemptable to cheat on your wife when she has cancer. I do not care how bad she is, either divorce her (and be honest about it) or live with it and support her.

But Edwards decided he needed Elizabeth for his campaign, but instead of at least trying to make that relationship work he went ahead with an affair with Hunter anyway (bedding her on the first meeting they had), lied about it, denied his child--while at the same time paying her hush money and knowing this video tape was out there.

In related news another tell all woman claims that Martha Stewart was so desperate for a new husband that she resorted to stalking a wealthy man in the Hamptons. "That he immediately ceased returning her calls was not part of Martha's script. Every rejection hit her hard. Each unanswered phone call ratcheted up her obsession. We spent entire East Hampton weekends hunting down 'The Mogul.'"

One of the biggest problems in all female-and-male relationships is when the man has a child out of wedlock and gets a friend to claim paternity and gets his wife to cover for him and gets his mistress to cover for him and it all gets out anyway because the guy is running for president and you can't expect all the media to ignore the car crash.

Okay, not all female-and-male relationships. I can't say it's happened to me.

I apparently am in the minority here, but I thought: (1) she was very attactive in that photo of her sitting on the bed with the various dolls, even if a sexpot photo was not very classy under the circumstances; and (2) she came across as a pretty likeable and honest person, even if new age weird. She did not seem to be trying to con anyone, although that is very hard to tell on a printed page. I thought it was a fascinating interview.

Of course, what Edwards and she did was very bad and selfish. But even on the issue of the ugliness of cheating on a wife dying of cancer, if Elizabeth is the witch and fraud that she now is being made out to be by multiple sources, doesn't that lessen the culpability of Hunter somewhat?

"I apparently am in the minority here, but I thought: (1) she was very attactive in that photo of her sitting on the bed with the various dolls, even if a sexpot photo was not very classy under the circumstances; and (2) she came across as a pretty likeable and honest person, even if new age weird."

Two words, dude: Shank whore.

I mean, anyone who would fuck a Democrat candidate for President starts out as a skank anyway. But hey, the world needs "practice girls" to abuse before you find the girl you want to take him to momma, and so that's why we have a Democrat Party.

But this bitch is fugly to boot, so, I guess for her it was all about anybody wanting to put it in her in the first place.

I'm sure she was ecstatic to find someone who would willingly fuck her well-aged vag with that horse face of hers.

There are two Americas:Those who deal with their wife's metastatic breast cancer by diving into the chakra of an ex-coke-snorting daughter of a horse killing lawyer, and those who don't.

One for those scamming lawyers who have everything they need, and then one for everybody else.

I want to live in an America where we value adultery as well as fidelity, where the difference in our best lays and our worst lays cannot be filmed by The National Enquirer.

I want to live in an America that is once again looked up to as a place to get some really choice tail, and respected around the world for the freedom to dump your wife once she puts on a few pounds; an America that is an inspiration to common people everywhere who want to screw someone better.

"She might be a total flake and the principle may be misapplied to the situation, but she's right."

Wait, what?

Edwards denied paternity of the baby and attacked those who thought he could ever love anybody but Elizabeth back when... y'know... Hunter know that it was Edwards' baby and that, on some level, he had some feelings for her that might generously be described as love.

Keeping her mouth shut in that context wasn't teaching her child how to handle "female-and-male" relationships. She was teaching her child to be a weak and pathetic creature who shuts the fuck up when a scumbag of a man's reputation and career are involved.

It's hideous, really, and not at all right. (Not that any aspect of this whole sorry situation is "right".)

"Keeping her mouth shut in that context wasn't teaching her child how to handle "female-and-male" relationships. She was teaching her child to be a weak and pathetic creature who shuts the fuck up when a scumbag of a man's reputation and career are involved."

This is close, but a careful review of the facts would reveal that what she's actually teaching her little daughter is how to be a high-priced prostitute.

Remember ... Edwards was allowed by a willing media to deny paternity at the same time that Rielle was extracting hundreds of thousands of dollars from him to keep quiet about her pussy exploits.

Rielle Hunter is a prostitute.

She's merely teaching her little daughter how to fetch the highest price.

And then how to cash in for hundreds of thousands when the bidding war starts for your interview/naked bed pictures.

Hey, you guys remember when so many Democrats and so many media elites were fawning over how Edwards was so smart and gave such a great speech. Glad you don't do that kind of thing serially, or we might end up with weak, overhyped presidents who cannot lead and don't know where to go.

"Martha said... Rielle is trying to contrast her hot relationship with Johnny with wife Elizabeth's emasculating relationship with John."

Exactly.Rielle seems to be of the opinion that there is no "Saint Elisabeth", but a manipulative castrating bitch intead. Who saw Johnny Edwards as her ticket to wealth and power. That pushed Edwards far past where he wanted to be - while demeaning him all the way, in private.If Rielle's story is true, it makes the affair more understandable. If Edwards WAS married to a Monster.

Yes, Elisabeth is still dying. As she has for the last 3 years, with a new book and book tour coming....

I agree "Saint Elizabeth" was no saint. But aren't all first wives depicted as manipulative bitches by the "sexy" thinner younger mistress who claims she did not wreck the already empty/ruined marriage?Thirty + years of marriage is not a sexy affair.

I feel sorry for that poor child. She's going to grow up, see those photos, and then have to burn all her sheets and stuffed animals. The Horror.

I said this on another website, but it should be repeated (in part) here: By a certain age, every man with more than two brain cells to rub together has learned a critical rule of guyhood: You don't stick it in teh crazy. Edwards = FAIL.

DON'T YOU GUYS FELL GUILTY NOW FOR PICKING ON POOR RIELLE? SERIOUSLY, SHE IS OUT OF HER LEAGUE IN LETTING GC PHOTOGRAPH HER WITHOUT ANY CONTROL.

Rielle Hunter is said to be upset with several somewhat racy photographs of her that accompany the long interview in the new issue of GQ in which she details her affair with John Edwards.

Speaking on ABC's "The View," co-host Barbara Walters said she had talked to Hunter, 45, on Monday morning, and that Hunter had "cried for two hours" upon seeing the images and deemed them "repulsive."

Hunter trusted the photographer, Mark Seliger, to take classy photos, according to Walters. But several of them show Hunter lounging around in only a collared white dress shirt and no pants. "I went with the flow," Walters quoted Hunter as saying.

Well, the video of the photo shoot was very interesting. Hunter looked in a state of shock. mostly expressionless, and not exactly the free spirit that everyone, including herself, describes. I don't know why I even write anything that sounds like I'm defending her, but she looked like she was being taken advantage of. Also, that one photo on the bed with the stuffed animals sure did flatter her. She is not nearly that good looking.

"She might be a total flake and the principle may be misapplied to the situation, but she's right."

"Wait, what?"

The principle may be misapplied to the situation, but she's right about relationships (at least about women emasculating men and that being bad) and she's right about the message to her daughter. Edwards denying paternity was done and couldn't be undone, but although it's not true that he eventually came around on his own, it's still better for the daughter to have that illusion of him coming around on his own and claiming her as his own.

I don't *like* either of them, but I really do think that it doesn't help irresponsible people (in this case, men) to become responsible by responding immediately and managing and correcting their errors. I really do think that once that's done there is no longer any opportunity and no longer any motivation for a person (in this case, men) to become responsible.

And a whole lot of Male/Female (not speaking to SS but I'm sure it applies) relationship problems involve not respecting the other person enough to let them screw up.

This is why I am forgiving, supportive even, of Tiger Woods. He had sex with a couple of porn stars in a luxury suite of a Las Vegas hotel. If you're going to blow out the marriage, that's the way to go. Everyone in the Edwards' affair looks needy and/or manipulative. Their lust was as much an affectation as their respectability....Sex is God's joke on humanity, but the scandals of politicians seem exceptionally sad and futile.

reader iam's link to the story about the death of Rielle/Lisa Druck's horse led me to the Sports Illustrated article entitled Blood Money, where the words evil and insouciance are used in describing those involved with the fraud.

From Blood Money:

"'Even federal agents, who thought they had seen everything, were shocked by the insouciance of some of those who dealt with Burns. Burns recalls one woman's approach to him at a horse show: "She said, 'Do you think you could kill my horse for $10,000?' So I did. She bought another horse with the insurance money and came up to me two months later and asked me to kill her new horse. She didn't like it."

There is a troubling banality about the evil at work in these cases. "We are dealing with a way of life here." one investigator said. "These people thought they had some sort of right to do these things.'"

You mean aside from the fact that the model is placed on a twin bed, surrounded by children's plush toys, posed shyly, with angelic light surrounding - clad only in virginic white ... and what porn ensemble would be complete without a "pearl necklace."

I mean aside from the fact that you can't see her Hello Kitty panties, this is fairly standard kiddie porn for the adult Democrat Party audience.

I bet dollars to donuts she shaved her pussy for this shot even though you can't see it.

Oh yes you do. By John Edwards' age, every guy has learned that "teh crazy" is a fantastic fuck. Maybe the best kind.,

Oh no no no. There's "crazy" (as in wild) and then there's "teh crazy" (as in boil a bunny). The former is fun and irreverent and uninhibited. The latter is batshit crazy and hears voices in her head. Hunter is teh crazy.

Oh yes you do. By John Edwards' age, every guy has learned that "teh crazy" is a fantastic fuck. Maybe the best kind.,

Oh no no no. There's "crazy" (as in wild) and then there's "teh crazy" (as in boil a bunny). The former is fun and irreverent and uninhibited. The latter is batshit crazy and hears voices in her head. Hunter is teh crazy.

The horse Lisa/Rielle's dad arranged to have killed for insurance money was named Henry the Hawk and known to be a brilliant show jumper. According to the article linked by reader iam, Henry was owned by Lisa/Rielle; he was her horse and she had "competed on his back in shows all over Florida."

Betrayal and loss can do strange things to the psyche, with *teh crazy* being one of the results.

What if the young girl/woman cavorting on the twin bed with the stuffed animals was looking to replace one brilliant show jumper with another? One with whom she could once again tour to "all the shows in Florida". There's no denying Johnny's magnificent mane.

The problem is that neither you nor Rielle have demonstrated how challenging Edwards on his denial and insisting that he man up and pay child support would emasculate him.

The way I read what Rielle is saying (and what you are saying by proxy) is that it's OK for a man to disrespect and disown his own child if it suits him, and that the mother of that child should keep her mouth shut.

Pardon my French, but fuck that.

Speaking as a man, the responsibility a father has to do right by his children takes precedence over any hurt feelings that my be engendered by telling him to, y'know, man up.

"So are you saying it's all about the props, and not about the person?"

So then when you disengiuously said you didn't get the pedophile references, you weren't really being honest with us, were you? You get it. You're just feining ignorance about the symbolism evident in this photograph that Rielle happily sat for.

I'm saying that this kiddie porn photo shoot encapsulates everything you need to know about Rielle Hunter and her lifestyle.

She deliberately posed this way, for this shoot, on this bed, without those clothes. She posed herself spread eagle and donned that "pearl necklace."

She's participating in deliberately designed pseudo-kiddie porn in a magazine article that is supposedly meant to rehabilitate her image.

Youngblood... men aren't children. That doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes and aren't stupid and childish and what-all with some frequency.

They leave their d*mn socks on the floor.

But if you pick up their socks, then you're the problem.

Am I saying in any way that Edwards wasn't a class A douche bag? No, I'm not.

But if he's prevented from being a douche bag by someone, that someone is acting as his mother. He no longer has any possibility of non-douche-bag-ness even if the consequences of his actions have been avoided. So his socks all turn up in his drawer, clean and folded. This doesn't mean he's taken responsibility for the socks. It just means he never has to.

As much as Hunter may be a flake and as much as Edwards and the situation is just a wee bit more serious than the normal course of things... you fix the mistakes of your children, not the mistakes of adults, and if Mommy is fixing Daddy's mistakes than Daddy is one of the children.

It goes the other way too, of course, but we're highly sensitized to recognize patronization from men toward women and we call it misogyny or chauvinism.

Also please... I never said it was acceptable for any man not to claim his own child.

But being forced to pay child support doesn't auto-magically make a man a good father, does it. It just means he's been forced to fork over some money and the message to the child is a strong "he didn't want to, we had to force him" that can't be taken back and become voluntary later. There isn't any opportunity to change minds or become responsible or tell the child you want her after all. The lack of force in the case of Edwards is an illusion, of course, but at least there is the chance for it. Had Hunter "fixed Daddy's problem" there would be no chance at all.

So if she didn't desperately need the money (as many single or abandoned mothers do desperately need the money) how is waiting for him to get his head out of his butt the bad choice?

I don't understand your reasoning here at all. You're saying if a woman cleans up after a guy she's treating him like a child, and I agree there. However, by letting Edwards deny that this baby was his child and taking care of the baby entirely on her own, that's precisely what Rielle was doing -- cleaning up after him.

Rielle was "fixing" his "problem" by staying silent while he was using his influence and position to discredit the suggestion that he was the child's father when he should have been using his position and influence to care for his child.

Speaking as a man who has done some fairly manly things throughout his life, I don't think that telling a guy to clean up after himself or not letting him get away with an attempt to dodge responsibility for his child is emasculating. If anything, it's the exact opposite: an opportunity for the boy to become a man by challenging him to nut up.

Men are not this fragile creatures who must be protected from the consequences of their actions lest their widdle dicks fall off.

And no, it's not about the money. It's the principle of the thing. A woman shouldn't have to be in desperate need to tell a guy to step the fuck up and do right by his child.

Oh, and yes Synova, you did say that it was OK for a guy not to claim his own child. Edwards went out all indignant and told the world flatly that the child was not his. Hunter didn't say anything, even though she knew the child was his. That's what's at issue here.

I recall an article aimed at men that suggested that in order to regain a sense of control and responsibility and self-worth and to help themselves get past the resentment toward ex-wives that they ought to add a voluntary portion to their court mandated child support settlements.

Doing so changes the dynamic of being forced. It restores self respect.

Something like 85% of child custody cases don't go to court. There's no forcing involved. It's all voluntary. Now, if you add that number to all of the men who voluntarily do right by their children in other ways (such as stay with the mother in a stable relationship), only a tiny fraction of men are forced by the court to pay child support.

I could not possibly care less whether or not that tiny of chronic deadbeats and selfish narcissists is offered a method to "get past the resentment to their ex-wives" by the court. (If a guy's hatred for his ex-wife is so great that he is unable to do right by his child? Fuck him.)

It's a moot point, though. This discussion isn't about court-mandated child support. It's about a guy who was willing to disown his own fucking child in an attempt to salvage what was left of his political career, and a woman who enabled that.

I get where Hunter's coming from: she has so little self-respect that she's willing to put up with this kind of treatment and she is delusional enough to frame it in bullshit New Age terms to avoid taking a good hard look at herself in the mirror.

I don't get where you're coming from. All you've really seemed to say so far is that guys should get a pass when they're being douchebags because, because to challenge them might make their widdle dicks shrivel up and fall off.

It's funny. From the beginning Rielle reminded me of a woman I met online, later in person, who caused a similar ruckus on a smaller scale.

She was a new agey, earth mother prostitute.

I mean that literally - she is an ex-prostitute - was Rielle's age and earning tax-free $ with this shtick of hers rather than her looks. I qualify that with "new age, earth mother" because she would tell herself that she sincerely enjoyed it, made her own reality, etc. etc.

That lasted until she married the guy in question, then suddenly she wanted to "create" being an artist and wasn't so inspired by being a prostitute any more. Hmmm. I wonder why?

You really couldn't tell if she didn't see the connection - if she was purely an aging hooker who knew this was her last chance for legitimate support and so was playing it for all it was worth, or if she was in sincere denial that she really had loved being a hooker.

It's basically a new age form of positive-thinking meets Stepford Wife.